Thursday, August 02, 2007

The Treblinka Revolt: August 2, 1943

How many times have I heard that statement reverberate in my head, an echo of the Holocaust.

On August 2, 1943 -- 64 years ago, the Jews in the Treblinka death camp revolted against the Nazis.

The fires of revolt and revenge from Yakov son's Shimon & Levi to Yehuda & Shimon HaMaccabi to Bar Kochba & Rabbi Akiva to Elazar Ben Yair at Masada fueled the spirits of the prisoners of Treblinka...and they revolted.

Not willing to accept their fate, they stood up and revolted. Many of those who revolted were murdered, but some did manage to escape and survive. We know in hindsight, that while the vast majority of revolts against the Nazis ended in failure -- those who didn't revolt were murdered as well.

On August 2, 1943 a planned rebellion by a Sonderkommando group occurred. Several Ukrainian guards and one SS officer were killed and more than 200 hundred inmates escaped. Most were hunted down and killed or recaptured. Despite its failure, the rebellion and subsequent escape from Treblinka is a testimonial to the courage of the inmates and their resistance accelerated the closure of the camp. The facilities at Treblinka were closed at the end of November, 1943. In 1967, Franz Stangl, commandant of Treblinka, was arrested in Brazil and extradited to the Germany. In December, 1970, he was sentenced to life imprisonment for his part in the murder of 400,000 people. He died in prison the following June.1